01 July 2008

Post Offices

BBC News reports on the newly announced Post Office closures in various counties in the North East of England. 57 of them are due to be shut in the near future, pending a six-week consultation.

As I watched the report on BBC Look North, in which a pretty respectable gathering of protesters had assembled at one of the closing branches, I couldn’t help but notice that almost every single one of the people in the crowd had white hair.

Have you ever been to a Post Office? Whenever I go to one to post a parcel or whatever, the place always seems to be crammed with old people, it takes about 20 minutes to get through the queue, during which I have to endure a robot man and woman repeat the phrase “Cashier number twelve, please.”, or variations of, over and over again, and then I have to pay “Large Letter” postage because my marginally elongated birthday card is, unfortunately, slightly exceeding one of Royal Mail’s f***ing arbitrary dimensions.

So what exactly is it about Post Offices that old people are so obsessed with? They are shit, and you can do everything you would need to do regularly at any number of other newsagents, corner shops or supermarkets. For pensions, can’t they be paid by BACS by now? If not, why not?